Internet video

[Jade456]

I just bought a new sony mini dvd camcorder. I wanted to make short video presentations on the new developments in Las Vegas, plus general info videos. All will be under 5 minutes in length. What format(s) do you think I should convert it to and which are the best for small files but decent quality?

[Will.Spencer]

I believe that the cutting edge for web video is now moving to FLV (FLash Video) (http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/flv_exporter.html).

[fryman]

You should ask shoemoney, he has some experience setting up videos

[danimal]

you can download the free windows media encoder from microsoft, it has the best combo of picture quality and low bandwidth... you can easily embed the player into the page, and put some banner ads around it.

[nevetS]

divx has by far the best compression rate, but it's a pain for users who do not have it set up.

You can use after effects to convert your movies to flash which is probably the most widely supported format outside of microsoft's, but then you're ignoring your mac users. If I were you, I'd try out flash, quicktime, and wmv to start out with and watch your stats to see if you can drop one.

AVI's are widely supported but are always big - unless you use divx... it's an endless loop :)

[iCreate]

Isn't Apple's H264 meant to be pretty good? (Comes with Quicktime Pro)

Also, don't forget poor mac users. Flash on the Mac (Especially in Panther (10.3) was horrifically slow when it came to animation). I havn't looked much since I got tiger but if I remember (which I probably won't in all honesty) I'll have a look later and let you all know.

[danimal]

anytime you put video on the web you have to be concerned about player penetration... most people will leave your website before they sit thru a player download and install.

because of that, divx is not an option... and i would argue strongly that nero h.264 has better quality anyway, unfortunately there aren't any h.264 media players installed because it's such a new format... with the free windows media encoder you get two-pass encoding and vbr, with great quality and xlnt player penetration... you can't touch that price/performance ratio with a divx encoder.

macs have less than 3% of the internet o.s.'s, not worth worrying about unless you target that platform... use your webstats to tell you what platforms really matter on your particular site.

[mikmik]

I agree danimal. Windows encoder, and once you have that, you can then import your WMV into Flash and sometimes get smaller yet.